by Rainey Daye
“Yeah, turning a ten-minute shower for the purpose of getting clean into an hour of getting down and dirty,” Jess added with a laugh.
When they finally stepped out of the shower and the men went to dry her off, Maggie stopped them. “If I let you do that, we’re just going to wind up back in bed, and I don’t know about you, but I’m starving!”
“Yeah, we did work up an appetite and burn through some serious calories last night. Okay, fine, you win,” Alex added with a pout. “We’ll each dry ourselves and then raid the kitchen.”
Maggie finally left their room wrapped in an oversized towel so that she could change into some clean clothes in her own room, where she also brushed her teeth and used the toilet before joining the two of them in the kitchen where they were preparing an oversized brunch, since it was now past noon.
After they had sated the worst of their hunger pangs, Maggie ventured, “About this summer…”
The men instantly put down their utensils and looked at her, their faces stoic.
“I talked to my mom last night. Well, I IM’d her anyway.”
“Yeah?” Jess asked when she didn’t continue right away.
“Well, naturally, I can’t tell my folks that I’m dating both of you. They’d freak. And not only because they both think you’re gay. But they know that you’ve become my two best friends. I told them how we had really been looking forward to doing things together this summer, and I had completely forgotten about my trip home when we were making plans. Not that I told them those plans were actually dates, but, well, you know what I’m saying, right?”
Both men nodded, giving her silent encouragement to continue. “Well, of course my folks want me to spend time with them, since I’m away at school and such, so when I explained my dilemma to Mom, she suggested that the two of you come and stay with us for a week or two this summer. We have an extra room that used to be my brother’s, and my folks are pretty open-minded, especially since my Aunt Tanya is gay, so, well, what do you say? Want to spend a couple weeks visiting my hometown with me?”
“Are you serious?” Jess asked.
“Yeah, I am. Though we would have to act as if we’re strictly roomies, since the town’s rather small, and I’m pretty sure my folks have already told everyone that I was rooming with two gay men at college.”
“Does your hometown have trouble with gays? Are they going to treat us like pariahs?” Alex wanted to know. “Don’t get me wrong, Mags. We would love to meet your folks and visit your hometown, especially if it meant that we wouldn’t be separated from you for as long as we thought we would, but I don’t want to be stared at either or have people whispering about us as we walked by. After all, everyone around here thinks we are strictly heterosexual. So to suddenly be around people who think I’m gay? Hell, I don’t think I’d even know how to act like a stereotypical gay man, and if that’s what they’re expecting…”
“Just act like yourselves. Although I would advise that you keep your hands and your lips to yourselves in public. If anyone caught either of you groping me in public, my parents would freak.”
“So we’re still going to have to be celibate without you for six weeks after all?” Jess asked with a pout.
“Jess!” Alex snapped, smacking his arm. “Do you or do you not want to spend time with Mags? Sheesh. It’s not always about sex, you perv.”
“I know that. But we’re still in the lust stage of our relationship with her,” Jess protested.
“Well, if you don’t think you can control yourself, then you can stay home. As for me,” Alex continued, looking at her, “I would love to spend a couple of weeks with you in your hometown.”
“Hey! I can keep it in my pants if I have to. Doesn’t mean I want to or won’t be thinking about it, though,” Jess said. “Yeah, Maggie, I would love to visit with you.”
Maggie smiled at both of them, not letting them know that she had every intention of trying to find some alone time with them so that they could indulge themselves, just in case things conspired against them to keep that from happening, leaving them frustrated and disappointed. She’d rather surprise them with her resourcefulness instead. “So, I’m supposed to leave on July second. We just need to decide if you want to spend the first two weeks or last two weeks of my visit with me. Or maybe two weeks in the middle. Whatever you decide works for me.”
The two men sat back and finished their brunch in silence while they thought about it. They then rinsed off their plates and left the kitchen together to discuss it further while Maggie went to the sink to wash the dishes. When she rejoined them in the living room, Alex told her that they had decided that they wanted to start on their dates.
“We have three weeks before you leave, so we want to squeeze in as many of our dates as we can and work on the date selections. Since school is out for the summer, we don’t have to wait for the weekend for our dates.”
“Oh, that sounds good,” Maggie said. “When should we plan for our first date?”
“Tonight. It’s my turn for an individual date. Since there’s really no time to plan ahead, I thought we could go with a generic dinner and a movie, if that’s okay with you,” Alex said.
“Yeah, that would be fine. There’s that new comedy out that I really wanted to see.”
“Well, you’ll probably have to wait until it comes out on cable to see it, because I plan on spending most of the time doing wicked things to you in a darkened theater,” Alex warned her. “Oh, and make sure you wear a dress,” he added before he gave her a quick kiss and left the room to check on show times.
Chapter 16
The next three weeks passed in a blur. The three of them went out almost every single night. When they returned home from their individual dates, they would either make out on the couch for a while or simply head straight upstairs to her bedroom, where they would make love. The next morning, the one who had been left alone to fend for himself never said a word that the other had spent the night alone with her.
On the other hand, whenever the men called ahead when returning from their own date, they would tell her that she didn’t need to go hide out in her room. If it was still early enough, the three of them would spend the evening watching television together or talking, although she usually turned them down when they asked if she wanted to retire upstairs with them, explaining that she understood that they needed their own alone time together.
Their group dates, though, usually ended with her spending the night in their room. Thus, they cleared out a couple of dresser drawers and made room in their closets for her. She had an extra toothbrush in their bathroom, and each of them had placed an extra one in hers, although they both turned down her offer of giving them their own drawer in her dresser.
Whenever Maggie told them she just wanted to cuddle with them, they respected her wishes and never pushed her into having sex. And on occasion they gave in to their own desire for each other while she slept in their bed. She had been awakened on more than one occasion to the sounds of their passion and had often just watched, still fascinated by the sight of her two beautiful boyfriends loving each other. That didn’t mean that it didn’t turn her on. A couple of times, she had even joined in, and both men welcomed her attentions eagerly.
They drove her to the airport together on the second. Because of the somberness of their coming separation, none of them bothered to hide their relationship to each other. Alex walked through the terminal with his arm around her shoulders while Jess held her hand. And when her row was called for boarding, each man took his turn kissing her before she boarded her flight, garnering them looks from her fellow passengers and the people in the boarding area, but they didn’t care. It was a bittersweet parting. Neither man had told her when they would be joining her. They simply said they wanted to surprise her, although they both agreed that she should spend at least the first week there without them so that she and her folks could catch up.
“We’ll see you soon,” Alex assured her.
&nbs
p; “I know,” Maggie whispered as she sniffed back her tears. “I just miss you both so much already.”
“We feel the same way, Mags,” Jess said.
Maggie nodded again and hugged them both at once. They pulled back and gently brushed the tears from her cheeks. They then leaned forward simultaneously and placed chaste kisses on her cheeks before they nudged her toward the boarding ramp. She turned around at the bend and waved once more before she continued on and took her seat.
“Who were those guys out there?” her seatmate asked her breathlessly. “I saw you out there kissing both of them.”
“They’re my boyfriends,” Maggie responded morosely.
“Why so sad?”
“Because I won’t be back home with them for six weeks,” Maggie told her.
“Back home with them? You guys live together?” Her seatmate gasped.
“Yeah.” Maggie nodded.
“Wow! You go girl! Damn! How’d you luck out? They are absolutely gorgeous!”
“I know how lucky I am. And they aren’t just two handsome faces or drool-worthy bodies. They are the most caring, generous, and sweetest men that I have ever met. They are both romantic and raw. They satisfy needs that I didn’t even know I had. And I hate the idea of being apart from them for any length of time,” Maggie found herself confessing to a total stranger.
“Honey, you keep talking like that, and me and every other single lady on this plane are going to shuck you out the door at twenty thousand feet and then track down those two to help them through their grief!”
Maggie burst out laughing, especially when she noticed the woman across from them nodding her head vigorously in agreement.
Maggie found herself explaining over the first leg of the flight home that the three of them had simply started out as college roommates, but their relationship had evolved from friendship to romance. Since she couldn’t chose between them and they both felt equally strongly about her, they had decided to embark on their current polygamous relationship.
“Do you ever…? I mean, together?” her seatmate asked breathlessly.
Maggie blushed, and her seatmate hooted as Maggie confessed, “Well, we have gotten carried away at times. But it’s not like we’re having orgies all the time.”
When the plane finally landed two hours later, she bid good-bye to her seatmate and audience and proceeded to the next gate to catch her connecting flight. Once she arrived at the boarding area, she called home to assure them that she was fine, as per their request.
Her connecting flight was on a much smaller plane, and her parents would be waiting to pick her up at the airport for the two-hour drive to her hometown. She assured the two men, who were each talking on an extension with her, that she would call again as soon as the second flight touched down.
“And don’t forget to call us when you get to your parents’ house,” Jess told her.
“It’ll be after midnight your time,” Maggie protested.
“Don’t care. It’s a two-hour drive to the house. We want to know that you made it there safely. Do you really think we’re going to be able to sleep until we know that you’re safe?” Alex asked.
“Okay, I’ll call. I promise,” Maggie assured them.
“How long is the connecting flight?” Jess wanted to know.
“That flight is fifty minutes, and we should be boarding in about half an hour.”
“Okay, we’ll give you five hours then to check in with us. That should take care of any traffic or luggage delays. If you don’t call by then, we will be calling you,” Alex told her.
“When are you coming?”
“Miss us already?” Jess teased.
“Of course I do.”
“We miss you, too, sweetheart,” Alex said. “Letting you get on that plane was the hardest thing either of us has had to do. We’ve already emailed your mom and told her when to expect us.”
“You have?” Maggie asked.
“We want it to be a surprise, so don’t be badgering your folks to find out, or they’ll think something fishy is going on. You’re supposed to be missing your folks and wanting to spend time catching up with them, not missing your roommates,” Alex chided her.
“You mean missing my boyfriends,” Maggie corrected him. “By the way, I either made some enemies on the flight or became the envy of all the women on it. They saw our good-bye at the terminal and were quite interested in us.”
“Oh, what did you tell them?” Jess wanted to know.
“I told them that the two of you were my lovers and were quite fantastic in bed, and that I was going to miss our nightly orgies while I was away,” Maggie responded glibly.
There was stunned silence on the other end of the phone before both men burst into laughter.
“Ah, Mags,” Jess finally managed to say. “Have we told you lately how much we love you?”
“I love you guys, too,” Maggie replied softly.
A few minutes later, they ended their phone call, and Maggie sat down to await her connecting flight.
* * * *
Maggie climbed into her old twin bed later on that night, exhausted from the long plane and car rides and the slight feeling of panic that had set in shortly after she had arrived. She was truly ecstatic to see her folks again, but she couldn’t help but miss Alex and Jess. She had called them as soon as she walked into the house and spent a good five minutes assuring them that she was safe and sound while her parents stood there, smiling and nodding in approval at how concerned her two roommates were about her safe arrival and general welfare.
The rest of the evening had been spent in catching up as her parents relayed town gossip to her and asked her all about school and her studies.
“By the way,” her mom said as they were finishing dinner. “Troy is back home for the summer. He was asking about you. We invited him over to dinner tomorrow night.”
“Mom!” she gasped at the hopeful note in her mom’s voice. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to play matchmaker with us. We’re over.”
“Never say never, Maggie,” her mom said. “He misses you.”
“Uh-huh, sure he does. Besides, we both go to colleges a thousand miles apart. We couldn’t make it work our first year away at school. What makes you think we could make it work now?”
“Because he told me that he now has the option of transferring colleges. If not to yours, then maybe to one close by. Or you could both come back to one closer to home. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Mom!” she practically screeched, starting to feel the first stirrings of panic. “We’ve changed too much. We both recognized and acknowledged that last summer. That’s why we broke up. Besides, I’m sure he has another girlfriend by now.”
“Actually, he doesn’t,” her mother replied excitedly. “I know because I asked. He told me point-blank that none of the girls he met at college measured up to you. He said you ruined him for all time where other women are concerned. Isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard?” She sighed.
“Very sweet,” Maggie replied in a flat tone. “But I don’t love him anymore, if I ever really did. And frankly, I haven’t even thought about him this past year.”
“Just wait until you see him again. All those old feelings will come rushing back,” her mother said.
Maggie had been forced to resign herself to Troy’s presence at their dinner table tomorrow and could only pray that he was simply being polite when he told her mother how much he missed her. She so did not need the stress of fending off his advances for the next six weeks!
So when she retired to her room, she dug out a picture that she had snapped of Alex and Jess along with a photo of the three of them on one of their group dates and propped them on her bedside table. She then pulled out the T-shirts that she had filched from both of them and climbed into bed, clutching them close, inhaling their unique scents, which clung to the cotton.
The next day began early, since many of their neighbors and friends stopped by the house to
welcome her home and to impart gossip and garner some more for themselves about her adventures away from home. Maggie worried about how she was going to negotiate the minefield that was her living arrangement. Her Aunt Tanya had had a hell of a time when she had accidentally been outed and had finally felt compelled to leave town to get away from the stares and gossip of the small-minded people here. Her mother was still fuming over the fact that her little sister hadn’t been back home for fifteen years and that people still whispered about her whenever some scandal erupted, using Aunt Tanya as the standard that they measured all scandals against. For that reason alone, she couldn’t understand why her parents had stayed here. She even remembered her dad offering to put in for a transfer whenever Mom came home crying and furious about the gossipmongers bringing up her sister again. But her mother was a stubborn woman who refused to be run off by their nasty ways. She would throw their own misdeeds right back in their faces and save her tears for the privacy of her own home. Thus her mother and the town had fallen into an uneasy truce over the years.
And she couldn’t understand why her mother had made the suggestion that her roomies come to visit. Especially when she found out that her parents hadn’t breathed a word about her living arrangements to anyone in town. And their visit had been her mother’s suggestion. Maggie had told her that she was thinking about spreading her visit out, maybe spending a week or so at home both at the beginning of July and the end of August before the fall term began, and in between, maybe her folks could put in a vacation request and they could meet somewhere in the middle and spend a couple of weeks vacationing together. But her mom had wanted her to come home for the entire six weeks and suggested that her roommates come visit them instead.
But as her mother rushed to the door, breathing excitedly, “Oh, maybe Troy decided to come over early,” Maggie suddenly knew. Her mom was hoping that she would fall back into the arms of the town’s golden boy, and to ensure that that happened, she was willing to entertain her roommates for two weeks, anything to guarantee that Maggie spent the maximum amount of time that she could with Troy.